If we unbalance Nature, human kind will suffer. Furthermore, we must consider
future generations: a clean environment is a human right like any other. It is
therefore part of our responsibility towards others to ensure that the world we
pass on is as healthy as, if not healthier than we found it. - His Holiness the Dalai Lama
The human being has two states of consciousness: one in this world, the other in the next. But there is a third state between them, not unlike the world of dreams, in which we are aware of both worlds, with their sorrows and joys. When a person dies, it is only the physical body that dies; that person lives on in a nonphysical body, which carries the impressions of his past life. It is these impressions that determine his next life. In this intermediate state he makes and dissolves impressions by the light of the Self.
-Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead. There has never been a time when you and I and the kings gathered
here have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist. As the same person inhabits the body through
childhood, youth, and old age, so too at the time of death he attains another body.
The wise are not deluded by these changes.
-Bhagavad Gita 2:12-13
Amusement
Some live life lightly as if it was a joke-and we sometimes call them useless bums. But these people are not necessarily unwise. We should all learn to see ourselves with some degree of amusement, remembering that our "selves" are illusory anyway. It is often the ego that demands us to take ourselves too seriously, making us pompous. Yes-being egoless is much easier said than done. But it can be trained from the basics!
For example, when you slip and fall in public in front of everybody (It happened to me before-it was such a ridiculous fall that I laughed till my sides ached!), try to grin it away! Do you know there's Compassion involved here? The people around you might feel uneasily tense to some extent if you were to pick yourself up grumbling, or even looking flustered and ashamed. That's Compassion for the crowd-assure them with a grin that you're okay! They might even smile back-it's true! And its Compassion for yourself for sure. It's okay to be occasional clowns as long as we learn to be more careful in future!
It takes spiritual effort to laugh the trivial things in life away. And one funny thing is that many things are indeed trivial and we do take them too seriously. I reckon life is a joke, but a serious joke! A difficult joke that has to be "caught" to be felt funny. Sometimes, the lessons learnt send us rip-roaring. But one day, with enough effort, we shall all smile gently like the Buddha.
"Amusement" courtesy of buddhanet.net - Daily Enlightenment
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